Posted on 03/30/2024 8:12:01 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Vietnam Veterans’ Day is annually observed on March 29. It commemorates the hardships suffered and sacrifices made by nine million Americans during the Vietnam War, and their families who supported them before, during, and after.
Through the years I’ve done a great deal of research and introspection about the war, to understand the war’s pathology from beginning to end. I’ve returned to Vietnam twice for visits and research, and Vietnamese and American friends and veterans have provided their perspectives. The net result of these efforts yielded an unequivocal verdict: the war was a grave self-inflicted injury on our nation on many levels, a “Greek tragedy” writ large, that changed our country forever and whose negative impact still haunts us.
It was a monumental misjudgment of geopolitics and foreign policy, willful ignorance of Southeast Asian nationalists’ motives and alliances, racially motivated hubris, corporate greed, and many missed opportunities for diplomatic solutions along the way.
The war grew from small, discreet beginnings and then escalated into a conflagration with a life of its own. It caused a generation of Americans to lose trust in their nation’s institutions and tore painfully at the nation’s social fabric, opening fault lines in our society that are still divisive.
On the economic front, it has been argued that the billions spent on the war carried tectonic consequences that continue to plague our national financial stability. There is simply no upside to be found from any objective look at the facts of our Vietnam debacle.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Is over 50,000 American lives worth it. Was it worth it for all the war hating, war protestors to grow older and become this nation’s elitists who now virtually run it.
The leftists would have glommed onto another cause to advance Marxism.
Vietnam helped stop the advance of communism across the globe.
We would be saluting Lenin today if we hadn’t fought pretty much everywhere.
Freedom is infinitely worth it.
I thank every Vietnam Veteran I meet.
No
58,200+
Nope. The hippies were correct. Our gubmit was lying. And letting a nation go communist assures us that that nation will never be able to compete with capitalism. And yes, I was a new pilot during the Vietnam era and was slated to go over in an unarmed spy plane. Nixon withdrew us just as I got my port call.
Like WWI, and the WWI consequences in Communism, Nazism, WWII, Red China, and Korea before Viet Nam.....it was not “worth it”.
US involvement was avoidable at a dozen points and our objectives could have been accomplished in a far less costly manner by competent honest leadership.
Something we lack a lot of the time.
A mistake from the start. From the first LBJ lie.
I don’t think so. The RATS got us involved in that mess and it took a Republican to get us out. We claimed we were fighting communism. The communists kicked us out and Vietnam went full commie. Now they are one of our major trading partners and Vietnam is one of America’s favorite places to vacation and spend their money.
McNamara and LBJ can burn in hell.
The hippies were not correct. They were pushing for the same exact thing the Vietnamese communist were. They weren’t doing it for altruistic reasons such as government honesty. The hippies were trash and now occupy top levels in our government, and they are the source of the Maoism and communism in America today. You should honor and treasure every Vietnam vet you meet. That said, it was a waste of lives, money, and empowered the counterculture movement that led to the dystopian government we have today.
Never understood why LBJ dropped bombs on the Ho Chi Minh Trail instead of simply giving Hanoi the Dressen treatment. The NVA certainly had it coming to them.
I don’t trust the U.S. government today, and I wouldn’t have trusted it in 1965, either.
THE END.
......this is a snippet from Fred Red’s great website, “Fred on Everything”...he is a Purple Heart VietNam Marine, so he knows a lot about what he writes....
.....”The war in Vietnam was lost, of course, but it wasn’t in vain. It made unimaginable profits for the arms industry. Why do you think American wars last so long? If America wins the war, the money stops flowing. If it loses the war, the money stops. Keep the war going, and the money flows......”
60 thousand give or take American lives lost for what...? we now by clothes made in VietNam; we eat their imported shrimp; the country as repressive as it is is now a vacation destination....again, for what....??
Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s leader, was so grateful to the US for its defense of the region, he had a purpose-built carrier repair facility built to facilitate American operations in the region. Vietnam was a Thermopylae - a delaying campaign fought in order to give the newly-independent nations of Southeast Asia time to stabilize and muscle up to destroy the insurgencies also being supplied by the Chinese and the Russians. The US effort in Vietnam essentially prevented huge stores of Chinese and Russian supplies from being diverted elsewhere.
Just how big were their efforts in Vietnam? Individually, they dwarf the combined EU and US supply efforts in Ukraine, whether in terms of troops, aircraft, tanks, SAMs, ammunition or artillery pieces.
This is a question that involves complex issues but has a simple answer:
NO
This is not denigration or opprobrium on those who served. I respect and honor them.
The blame falls squarely on the shoulders of Lyndon B. Johnson. What a piece of ####. Possibly the worst President before Biden.
Just my humble opinion of course. Welcome to correction.
The cold war was real and the collapse of the soviet union resolved many of the world’s problems (and created new ones)
Vietnam was a poor, worthless country - completely outside the original idea of “containment.” The US had no overriding strategic interest there.
The great irony is - we left Vietnam alone for 25 years after 1975, and now its a developing, friendly, and Pro-American place
That should be a lesson for corrupt MIC neocons in DC
No
5.56mm
....I am old enough to remember those days very well....
....”If we don’t stop those commie bastards in Saigon, we’ll be fightin’ ‘em in Peoria....!’..and so forth...
The question would only mean anything if the war were not hamstrung by the government.
If the military had been allowed to do what they needed to, it would have not had been the exercise in futility it was.
So in that regard, no, it was not worth the cost in human life that our government threw away.
Same with the war on terror and Afghanistan.
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